I am one of the recruiting managers here at GitLab. I would agree with @sytse that contributing to GitLab would be the strongest signal.

While we do keep the bar quite high from a technical perspective, we also do so as it relates to our values. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/ With us going through this current hyper-growth phase we have to make sure that everyone who comes into GitLab aligns with these.

For Engineering hires in the month of June we averaged ~65 days to move someone all the way through the interview process.

I am more than willing to set up some time to chat with you 1:1 if you have any more questions.